1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to carriers or trays for positioning a disk drive in a chassis bay and damping vibrations relative to the disk drive.
2. Background of the Related Art
Hard disk drives include a storage disk that is rotationally mounted to a main body or housing. For example, a disk mounted horizontally will rotate about a vertical axis. A disk head is also mounted to the housing for controllably tracking across the disk to desired positions. The movements of the disk and the disk head are combined into “seek operations” in which the disk head can read data from the disk or write data onto the disk.
However, the actuators that rotate the disk or reposition the disk head cause vibrations throughout the disk drive and its housing. These vibrations can cause read/write errors, write inhibits, or simply reduce the speed or other performance characteristic of the disk drive. The source of the vibration may include an out-of-balance disk stack or the rapid acceleration and deceleration of the disk head actuator.
These vibrations can certainly cause problems within a single hard drive, but the vibrations can also be transmitted to other adjacent hard drives and induce problems in those drives. Typically, vibrational forces are transmitted from one drive to another through the common enclosure or chassis that supports and secures the drives. One conventional approach to limiting the transmission of vibrational forces is to make the chassis stiff so that the entire mass of the chassis and its components oppose the vibrational forces through the principle of conservation of momentum.
Still, designing a completely stiff system is complicated by the commercial practicality of making the disk drive easily removable from the chassis bay. Therefore, a system integrator must design system cabinets and disk drive mounting hardware that mitigates vibration while accommodating maintenance and upgrading of hard drives. The mounting hardware is preferably simple and inexpensive, but many designs have failed. For example, simple plastic mounting systems have failed to mitigate the high levels of vibrations produced by a hard drive.
Therefore, there remains a need for improved disk drive mounting systems that are simple and inexpensive, while mitigating a suitable degree of vibration. The mounting system should accommodate installation and removal of the disk drive without requiring complicated and laborious procedures.